What follows are the collected copies of the result of an old tradition, carried out during the 74th Hunger Games.
It was an odd tradition, dating back to the earliest days of the Hunger Games. No one knew how or why it had started- indeed, it was almost unique in the minutiae of the Games in that its existence served no real purpose. Every other bit of the Games was carefully structured, planned to ensure the utmost enjoyment for the Capitol audience and to provide the most palpable possible punishment for the other districts. That was all- that was why the games existed. To provide comfort of any sort to the tributes, that wasn't part of the plan. They ate Capitol food and lived in Capitol comfort for the short time they spent in training simply because that was convenient- what point would there be in importing dull district food? No, the luxury the tributes experienced during their time in the Capitol was coincidental, nothing more.
The Gamemakers didn't care about the tributes. That sort of thinking was forbidden. While the people in the Capitol would make their attachments to one tribute or another, the Gamemakers simply treated each with the same disdain and lack of emotion.
Which did nothing to explain how the tradition began.
It was a simple thing, really, very simple, lasting only thirty minutes- it was very nearly the last thing each tribute would do, before entering the arena. After arriving at the arena, before changing into their Games outfits, they would have those thirty minutes alone. Just themselves and a piece of paper and pen. And they were told, write. Write to your families, write to your friends, write to the lovers you've left at home- write. Remember what's about to happen here. Remember how slim your odds are.
Remember that you will die.
It wasn't televised. It wasn't known, outside of the Gamemakers and the tributes that experienced it. The papers- the letters- were collected, and always found their way back home alongside the bodies of the tributes who died. While so many other things got lost in the Capitol system when it came to the districts, this tradition always held. The letters were always returned.
And there was no reason for it. Absolutely no reason for it. It might give comfort to the tributes who wrote it, or to their families, those in grief in the districts they'd left, but since when was that the Gamemakers' problem? It wasn't. And even still…every year, twenty four letters were written. And every year, twenty three letters were sent home in wooden coffins.
There was no official name for those thirty minutes. There didn't need to be. But the Gamemakers stenciled it in in their schedules, referred to it quietly as Memento Mori.
Remember that you will die.
It was a reality it'd take far longer than thirty minutes to face.
OOC: The Hunger Games belongs to Suzanne Collins, not me. The names and descriptions of the unnamed tributes from Districts 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are my own invention, but everything else belongs to her, naturally.
This is a collection of letters written before the Games by the twenty four participants in the Seventy Fourth Annual Hunger Games. One letter, or maybe occasionally two, will be released per week, until eeeeverybody's done. I'll try to keep on schedule, for realsies.
So, er, review if you want to see more, I suppose, and may the odds be ever in your favor.